Simon Dixon

THE founder of Rockar Hyundai, the highly-successful sales model that combines Hyundai showrooms in massive London shopping centres with a sophisticated online car buying system, says he will share the system with other dealers.

Simon Dixon, a member of the well-known UK car trading family, told Car Dealer News that his business model was to prove the concept and the system driving it, and then licence it to others in car retailing.

This is good news for the four Australian companies which are already talking to Mr Dixon about transferring the concept Down Under. As previously reported in GoAutoNews Premium, three of the four Australian companies are new to the car industry.

The news is certain to attract the attention of Australian dealer groups which are casting around for ways of moving beyond the traditional dealership model to secure their futures.

AP Eagers recently moved in this area by opening a Carzoos used-car store in a Brisbane Westfield shopping centre. The store links to an online sales system.

Mr Dixon operates two Hyundai dealerships from London shopping centres and has recently opened another for Jaguar Land Rover.

He told GoAutoNews Premium several weeks ago that one of his showrooms attracts more visitors than all the Hyundai dealerships in the UK combined and that this store remains the third highest seller in the Hyundai network. He said 94 per cent of buyers were new to Hyundai.

However, even though he is talking to other car-makers about opening his dealership concept for them, he says it could take a decade for him to roll out the business model store-by-store and that the real business opportunity would be to licence the software system to any dealers who want to take on the concept.

“We set out to reinvent car buying in 2012 and in the last 18 months have striven to ensure our credibility in the sector,” he said. “But if we share our technology we could achieve scale in a different way very quickly.

“I don’t want to keep what we have to ourselves. The system has been built to be shared.

“The industry needs to change and we want to help enable that because if we don’t there are lots of examples of new entrants taking business away from the established players,” Mr Dixon said.

By John Mellor